After the Note 7 fiasco, Samsung has a lot of work to do to earn back trust from customers. With that in mind, we can bet that the company will go out of its way to impress in the next releases. One of the things to look out for is an improved front facing camera in the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S8.

According to ET News, a Korean news website, the company is planning to bring autofocus to the Samsung Galaxy S8 front camera. Phone manufacturers have in the past treated the front camera as an afterthought. Going by the current trend, it looks like that’s about to change.

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Selfies are taking over

Statistics from Infogram show that more than a million selfies are taken every day. Currently, more than 279 million posts have the hashtag #selfie on Instagram. No, this number does not include other related hashtags like #selfies, #selfienation, #selfietime and #selfiesunday.

Clearly, Samsung may be on to something here. Smartphone buyers take millions of selfies every month. Hence it goes without saying that an exceptionally good Samsung Galaxy S8 front camera will be well appreciated. The report by ET News says that Samsung plans to do this by using an encoder type autofocus actuator.

Better Camera, Slimmer Phone

Essentially, encoder type autofocus will make it possible for the phone to be slimmer, while still getting functional autofocus. Most rear cameras with autofocus use Voice Coil Motor (VCM), which has coils between lenses. As a result, the lens is thicker, and this extra thickness is transferred to the phone’s overall thickness.

Encoder type autofocus has coils on the side. Hence the lens can be slimmer and still remain effective.

Currently, Samsung phones come with selfie cameras with fixed focus. These cameras are cheaper and smaller hence the phone can be slim and still deliver decent photos. However, as the distance between the camera and the object increases, the quality of the image goes down.

Adding an autofocus actuator ensures that the camera positions the lenses optimally to ensure the most ideal focal point for the object position. Bringing this to the Samsung Galaxy S8 front camera means that images will be sharp, clear and in focus regardless of how far the object is from the camera.

Battle of the ‘Selfies’

At the moment, the main variable used when comparing different phones using their front cameras is the number of pixels. Not long ago, a number of manufacturers decided to add LED flash to make the camera usable even in low light environments.

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Should they decide to add autofocus, Samsung will be leading the pack with a unique product that could help fix some of the trust problems it is currently facing.

We don’t know how many megapixels the Galaxy S8 front camera will come with. However, considering that Apple took things a notch higher with the 7MP camera on the iPhone 7, there’s a good chance Samsung will go above the 5MP lens that most of its flagship phones come with.

The company has not yet released details on what more we should expect to see on the Galaxy S8. All we know is that they will stop at nothing to make us forget about the Note 7.

We cannot discuss any information regarding new products that are not commercialized yet.